Home | Ecosystems | SAP | Protect Enterprise Data and Improve Compliance with Dynamic Authorization and Zero Trust Principles
Modern enterprises rely on their data to drive collaboration, innovation, and business operations. Sharing sensitive enterprise information, including intellectual property, financial records, and personal employee data across employees, partners, and suppliers accelerates productivity but introduces risks. Within SAP applications such as S/4HANA, ECC, BW, and Fiori apps, securing this data while enabling collaboration is critical.Â
Organizations must balance the need for timely access with the need to protect sensitive information and comply with regulatory requirements. NextLabs Data Access Enforcer for SAP (DAE for SAP) helps enterprises achieve this balance by enforcing granular, dynamic data access policies based on zero trust principles within SAP applications, ensuring secure collaboration while safeguarding critical business information.Â
Why Traditional Access Controls Fall Short
Static role-based access models are widely used but often struggle with modern collaboration needs. Organizations today operate across multiple regions, involve extended partner networks, and face diverse regulatory obligations. Static roles cannot reflect the real-time conditions, such as geographic location, project membership, or user clearance.Â
Overly restrictive SAP access can slow business processes, while overly permissive access risks exposing critical data. DAE for SAP addresses these challenges by providing dynamic, attribute-based access control (ABAC) within SAP applications, automatically adjusting permissions based on user, data, and environmental attributes in real time.Â
Applying Zero Trust at the Data Layer
Zero trust assumes no implicit trust – every access request needs to be verified. DAE for SAP applies zero trust principles at the data access layer in SAP applications, ensuring sensitive information is never exposed to unauthorized users, regardless of access method or location.Â
Dynamic policies evaluate multiple attributes in real time:Â
- User attributes: role, business unit, project membership, citizenship, clearanceÂ
- Data attributes: classification, sensitivity, typeÂ
- Environmental attributes: IP address, location, time of accessÂ
Policies control Create, Read, Update, or Delete (CRUD) permissions and apply dynamic data segregation and masking to prevent exposure. Notifications, alerts, and centralized logging provide transparency and support auditability.Â
Simplifying Policy Management
Centralized policy management allows organizations to define rules once and apply them across all connected SAP systems, ensuring:Â
- Consistent policy enforcement across users and systemsÂ
- Rapid policy rollout to meet evolving business or regulatory needsÂ
- Reduced administrative overhead, freeing IT resources for higher-value tasksÂ
Ensure Compliance and Simplify Audits
DAE for SAP helps organizations meet GDPR, export controls, and other regulations by:
- Enforcing dynamic data segregation and masking rules aligned with regulationsÂ
- Logging all access requests centrally for audit purposesÂ
- Providing insights into who accessed what data and whenÂ
Benefits: Make Sure the Right People Get the Right Data When They Need It
With DAE for SAP, organizations can:Â
- Automate access-control processes to simplify and accelerate authorization management Â
- Free IT resources by reducing manual role-based administration Â
- Ensure consistent, enterprise-wide policy enforcement across all SAP applications Â
- Protect sensitive data in real time using ABAC, dynamic segregation, and attribute-based controls Â
- Support efficient reporting and auditing while maintaining complianceÂ
Conclusion
By combining dynamic authorization with zero trust principles, DAE for SAP provides a modern framework for protecting enterprise data, streamlining compliance, and enabling secure collaboration across SAP applications.Â
Read the full solution brief to learn how organizations can strengthen SAP data security.Â
